More info on the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, Spain can be found here. I've actually visited the place, too, when I lived in Spain in the mid-1980's. Louis L'Amour, the Western writer, also visited the place, and one of the last novels published during his lifetime, The Walking Drum, is set in Cordoba, with the Mosque-Cathedral playing a role in the plot.
update: Wally pointed out a bad link in paragraph 2. Fixed. Thanks!
3 comments:
I wonder if you could give us the source of your claim that it was a Visigoth church before it was a mosque. It's such an iconic example of Islamic architecture that your claim is very hard to believe. Maybe you mean there was previously a Visigoth church on that site? Which of course would be an entirely different matter.
By the way, both your links go to the same place, the NYT article.
@wally: the fixed link in paragraph 2 explains the mosque's construction. Interestingly enough, the Visigothic church was built on the site of a Roman temple, but neither the Romans nor the Visigoths are around to raise a stink and snivel about it. And yes, it was the Muslims who made it into a masterwork. Doesn't mean that we roll the Reconquest back, though, and let them have it as a mosque again, unless they're willing to let Christians worship in Hagia Sofia, for example.
I agree with your main contention that it's a travesty to claim that the building "belongs" to Muslims because it was once a mosque. But strictly architecturally speaking, It's so clearly an Islamic religious structure that it's silly to drop the word "mosque" from its designation. And again, architecturally speaking, the Visigoths were barbarians, and their architecture (there are examples on Wikipedia), while charming, shows absolutely none of the qualities exhibited in the Cordoba mosque/cathedral, so IMHO it's misleading to say this building "was a Christian Visigoth church." But to repeat, the larger point you were making is one I don't disagree with. Sorry to go on at such length about this, but I majored in Art History, and nitpicking on the subject comes naturally.
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